A conventional cable includes a plurality of parallelly arranged insulated conductors, and is used in various kinds of electrical appliances, electronic apparatus, computers, and communication apparatus to transmit signals. While the conventional cable works well when being used between two fixed connecting elements, it could not be satisfactorily used with pivoting mechanisms.
However, pivoting mechanisms are often employed in many currently available electronic apparatus and communication apparatus. For example, the currently widely accepted mobile phones usually include a cover or a screen connected to a main unit of the mobile phone via a pivoting mechanism. At present, a miniaturized cable or a cluster of very fine conductors is used as a signal transmission cable to transmit electric signals from the main unit to the cover or the screen of the mobile phone.
While the miniaturized cable and the cluster of very fine conductors may be used as an alternative for transmitting signals via the mobile phone, they do not permit the pivoting elements for the cable or the cluster of fine conductors to be reduced in size. In other words, the large-size pivoting elements would form a limit in designing the main unit of the mobile phone.
On the other hand, more and more mobile phones or notebook computers are designed to transmit signals via pivoting elements, the sizes of the pivoting elements become smaller and smaller, and the pivoting mechanisms have developed from a simple one-dimensional structure to a two-dimensional structure. And, the conventional cable no longer meets these requirements. When the conventional cable is used with the existing size-reduced pivoting mechanism, it would adversely affect the operation of the pivoting mechanism. The conductors included in the cable tend to twist or tangle with one another during the operation of the pivoting mechanism. In a worse condition, some of the conductors in the cable would become damaged.
To overcome the above-mentioned problems, a clustered cable has been developed. While the clustered cable can be successfully extended through the hole on a pivot element, there is still a big problem in designing the contact pins at two ends of the cable for connecting to electronic components, such as connectors or soldering points. For example, in an original design of a circuit substrate for an electronic product, in the event the contact pins on the contactor are unchangeable, a cable with matched contact pins must be selected for use with the electronic product. When the contact pins on the cable and the circuit substrate are different from one another, problems would occur in the connection operation. As a result, cable manufacturers have to produce cables with different contact pins to meet different requirements. These cables with different contact pins not only increase the R&D and manufacturing costs, but also bring confusions to users.